The PC-USB connection on your Rotel device has two USB settings. The default setting is USB Class 1.0, which supports audio up to 96kHz. In order to support 192kHz audio, your Rotel device must be set to USB Audio Class 2.0 in the setup menu, and if you are using a Windows PC you must also make sure the USB 2.0 drivers are installed. Also, you may need to adjust the sample rate output on your computer as well.

For Windows PC users, you can find the USB 2.0 drivers on the CD included with your Rotel product, or you can download the drivers here.

Changing the Rotel device to USB Class 2.0

• From the setup menu, select the INPUT SETUP menu and choose the PC-USB input as the Source. The USB Audio mode can be selected under the AUDIO INPUT setting.

Adjusting the Sample Rate on the Computer

If your Rotel device has already been set to USB 2.0 (and the driver has been installed if you are using a Windows PC), the next step would be to check/adjust the sample rate settings on your computer.

• Mac OS X Users - Select Applications->Utilities->Audio MIDI Setup, then highlight the Rotel audio device from the list on the left side of the Audio Devices window. Choose "Use this device for sound output" if this has not already been selected. From this menu you can also select the desired Sample Rate to use, so if you are going to be listening to high-resolution audio files select the appropriate sample rate setting from the Format menu here as well.
• Windows Users - Select Start->Control Panel->Sound and Audio devices->Playback, then select the Rotel audio device from the list and select 'Properties'. Click the 'Advanced' tab and choose the desired sample rate from the Default Format tab.

An important note about changing the output format - since most of the recordings you will play from iTunes will have been ripped from 44.1kHz CDs, you will want to play them back at their native rate, so the computer needs to be set up to output 44.1kHz. If you leave it set at a higher resolution (96kHz, 192kHz etc), the computer will convert the audio up to this higher resolution which can reduce the sound quality, so it is important to only adjust the sample rate when you intend to play higher resolution audio files.

Software packages like Pure Music and Amarra are available for Mac users to help manage things like automatically playing back music files using their native rate. This eliminates the need to manually make changes if you frequently switch between 44.1kHz and 96kHz or 192kHz recordings.